What's New: Flexible Update Management (2025 release wave 1)
Flexible update management in Business Central, generally available with 2025 release wave 1 and available globally. Covers the five-month update period, grace and enforced update periods, skipping minor updates, target version selection in the admin center, and new API endpoints.
- Introduction and overview of flexible update management
- Benefits for partners and workload distribution
- Major update cycles and preview period
- Grace period and enforced update period
- Minor updates and version targeting capabilities
- 2025 update calendar and global availability
- Admin center features and API changes
- Admin center demo - update settings and target version selection
- Demo continued - unreleased version targeting
- Best practices for flexible update management
Overview
The video explains how flexible update management changes the way administrators schedule environment updates. It was in public preview throughout 2024 wave 2 and is generally available with 2025 release wave 1. It is now available globally, where before it applied only to Microsoft localized environments. The stated aims are to meet the needs of update adverse customers and to reduce partner workload.
It walks through the major update cycle: a five calendar month update period with a fixed end date, a one month grace period with weekly update attempts, and an enforced update period in which incompatible apps are uninstalled. It then covers skipping minor updates, targeting a version, and the new API endpoints. A demo in the admin center shows the update settings panel and target version selection, including unreleased versions. The video ends with best practices.
Key points
- Major updates have a five calendar month update period with a fixed end date. Updates arriving in April end in August, and updates in October end in February.
- After the update period, a one month grace period starts. Microsoft attempts the update every week, and a failed attempt is rescheduled seven days after the original date.
- If the update still fails, the environment enters an enforced update period. Incompatible apps are uninstalled but their data is kept, and it is available if a compatible version is installed later.
- Administrators can choose a target version and skip intermediate versions, for example going from 25.3 directly to 26.3. Scheduling a later version before a minor update ships skips that minor update.
- In the schedule environment update flyout, a specific date can be chosen for released versions. For unreleased versions no date can be chosen. Microsoft schedules the update within 14 days of release, and the tenant administrator can reschedule it afterwards.
- During update periods, new environments can be created on any supported version. For example, in the April-August 2025 period for version 26, either version 25 or 26 can be used.
- New API endpoints support the new flexibility. The legacy environment update API still works but does not support the new features.
Features
| Feature | Status | At | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flexible update management - General availability | generally available, demoed | 0:06 | “now with 2025 Wave 1 we’re very excited for it to reach General availability” (0:06) |
| Five-month update period with fixed end date | status not stated | 1:02 | |
| Weekly update attempts during grace period | status not stated | 1:40 | |
| Enforced update with app uninstallation | status not stated | 2:00 | |
| Skip minor updates capability | status not stated | 2:40 | |
| Target version selection for updates | status not stated, demoed | 3:20 | |
| Create environments on any supported version | status not stated | 3:35 | |
| Global availability for flexible update management | generally available | 4:53 | “the past few months this is only applied to Microsoft localized environments starting with 2025 release wave 1 um this is now available globally” (4:53) |
| Admin center update settings panel | status not stated, demoed | 5:53 | |
| Target version selection in admin center UI | status not stated, demoed | 7:35 | |
| Automatic scheduling upon release for unreleased versions | status not stated, demoed | 8:57 | |
| New API endpoints for flexible update management | status not stated | 5:13 |
Quotes
- 0:06 “now with 2025 Wave 1 we’re very excited for it to reach General availability”
- 1:22 “with flexible update management this update period is always five calendar months with a fixed end date”
- 1:40 “this is a one month period um during which we will attempt the update uh every week”
- 2:21 “we will uninstall the app but we will not delete the data so if you later on install compatible version of this app the”
- 3:20 “you can select a Target version for an update so if you’re on let’s say version 25.3 today you can choose to update uh”
- 4:53 “the past few months this is only applied to Microsoft localized environments starting with 2025 release wave 1 um this is now available globally”
- 5:13 “will continue to work uh but it will not support any of the new flexibility that we’re introducing here”
- 8:57 “the update will automatically be scheduled after within 14 days um since the since this specific version is released”
Presenters (as heard): Y, Ricardo.